


The Machine Orthodoxy

by The_Foxwolf



Series: The Machine Orthodoxy [1]
Category: Magic: The Gathering, Phyrexia - Fandom
Genre: Mirrodin | New Phyrexia, New Phyrexia, The Machine Orthodoxy, phyrexia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-08-31 06:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8568634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Foxwolf/pseuds/The_Foxwolf
Summary: I bring to you the glory and teachings of the Machine Orthodoxy. Here you will find the teachings of the Praetors. Urabrask. Sheoldred. Elesh Norn. Jin-Gitaxias. Vorinclex. Even some writings from Glissa, the Traitor; Geth, Lord of the Vault; and Atraxa, Voice of the Praetors.
Herein you will find the whole of the Machine Orthodoxy, the religion of New Phyrexia, the faith of the Compleat. This volume will contain the totality of the writings. For your comfort, the individual books of the Praetors will be collected in separate volumes in addition to this one.
Come. Let me show you the Glory of Phyrexia. Come and be Compleat.





	1. Chapter 1

The Book of Jin- Gitaxias  
Chapter 1

1) Perfection is an ideal. By its very definition, an object that is ideal is to be without flaws, ultimately efficient at its purpose, and endlessly functional. This definition, however accurate, is insufficient to encompass the totality of all that is defined by the notion of the word “perfect”.   
2) In reference to faith, perfection cannot be achieved except by the very concept of perfection as a whole. No individual can possibly attain the status of being “perfectly faithful”.   
3) For another example, perfection regarding work is also unattainable. The ideal of a perfect work would be ultimate efficiency without waste of any kind. Not only is attaining such an ideal mathematically impossible, it is also unreasonable to assume that an equivalent of its attainable virtue can be obtained.   
4) Even if at this very moment, the foundries were to reach their maximized efficiency as far as current processes and technologies go, we cannot ever claim to say that we have attained “perfect efficiency”.   
5) Why can we never claim to say that we have attained perfect efficiency? Because processes and technologies are ever improving. More advanced technology is being created at every instant. Processes are being refined by thinker at all times of the day. To say that perfect efficiency has been obtained is impossible.   
6) To say that we have reached an equivalent of such an ideal is impossible because all is improving all the time. A more efficient fuel source could be found. More efficient workers more suited to the task. Better geometric access ways and pathways throughout the foundries can be found that would shave milliseconds off of inefficiency.  
7) With that knowledge in mind, we must address all things, thoughts and actions alike, with the idea that perfection cannot be an attainable destination. It is, by its very nature, nothing more than an ideal.   
8) But what is an ideal and function does it serve to us if it is not obtainable? One would assume that the word “goal” would be one way to describe an ideal but the term is inaccurate. A goal is a destination, and as we have already stated, perfection is not a destination but an ideal. Failure to meet a goal has consequences both physical and mental. Thoughts of failure are detrimental to all.  
9) Instead, the word “inspiration” would be more appropriate.   
10) At no point in time should one be able to search one’s mind for an image of what perfection might be.   
11) Should such a mental image arise, it is already flawed, because we were capable of envisioning it.  
12) Since none of us are perfect, our perception is imperfect. As such, if we manage to conjure an image to our minds of what we consider perfection to be, it is through imperfect perception that such an image is obtained.   
13) This, in turn, makes our mental image of perfection imperfect and thus not a true image of what perfection is. This is why perfection is an ideal.   
14) Ideal, by the term, is an idea. Ideas cannot be conceptualized. All that can be done is to describe the contents of the idea, but the idea itself can never be given form. Upon doing so, it would immediately cease to be an idea and instead have form. To have form implies that we are aware that it has form. To be aware of it, we must use our imperfect perception. As such, any idea that becomes form is immediately lessened and imperfect.   
15) It is impossible to imagine the concept of perfection.   
16) How is it then that we are meant to strive towards perfection? That is, why the word “inspiration” is the most appropriate to determine what relationship we all have to the word “perfection”.   
17) How then, are we to strive towards the ideal of perfection without it being a goal or a destination? We do it in the action of the striving.   
18) We cannot achieve perfection, but that does not mean it is not worth striving toward.   
19) How does one strive toward the perfect? By being the best one can be. By producing the best one can.   
20) By no means is the best one can an admission of one’s perfection. But one is not capable of doing, producing, or being, anything more than their best.   
21) “Best” is defined as maximally efficient as possible. Even a powerful hydraulic piston, at its peak performance, cannot bear a load greater than its best capacity. This concept applies to all people.   
22) The most we can accomplish is the best that we can be and produce.  
23) By no means is “best” perfect. One person’s best mathematics may be half as good as another’s best. Or twice as good.   
24) But by virtue of that comparative and personal nature of the “best”, one’s best will never be perfect. But it is the closest we can all achieve with our imperfect selves.  
25) Only by being the best we can be, producing the best we can offer, by trying with our best efforts, can we begin to hope to have the right to claim that we are approaching perfection.   
26) Suppose then that ones manages to become the “best” one can be. What then? One becomes part of a greater system of all people that helps oil the cogs to create a more perfect existence for all.   
27) But one maximally efficient cog cannot compensate for an entire existence worth of cogs that are not at their best.   
28) This is something that is beyond one’s capacity to change. One can, by nature of one’s maximized efficiency, set an example for others to follow and be evidence that people can in fact be the best they can be. But in now way is one able to make that change of one’s own part.   
29) That is why all people are expect to operate and strive towards being the best they can be.   
30) Imagine a system in which all the gears and cogs are working at “their best”. That system, as beautiful as it sounds, will be the closest a system can become to perfection.   
31) By the nature of our own imperfection, we cannot hope to become any better, either as parts of a whole, or as a whole in itself. But it will, according to our faults and imperfections, be as close to perfect as we are able to achieve. That state is our destination.   
32) And what do we call this state? That state of ever reaching for being one’s best? Progress.  
33) Not progress in the sense of the word that implies an approach to completion of meeting of a goal. Progress in the sense of the word of advancement in a journey.  
34) For, make no mistake, perfection is not destination. But the attempt to reach it is a journey.   
35) Say for example, that perfection is the sun and progress is the foot bound journey towards it. In no case will one ever come closer to the sun.   
36) But that chasing of the sun, the following of the sunrise, is in itself an effort of merit.   
37) What more satisfaction to one’s own life can be had other than the attempt to live a life worthy of merit?


	2. Urabrask

The Phyrexian Orthodoxy  
   
The Book of Urabrask  
Chapter 1

1) Let us begin by talking about gifts. What is the grandest gift someone can receive?  
2) A hint: It if a gift that cannot be given. I speak, of course, of freedom.   
3) For yes, even in Phyrexia we value and cherish freedom.  
4) What is freedom? There are many answers given by those with the freedom to claim to know the answer. But freedom is best defined by those who do not have freedom.   
5) Here on New Phyrexia we can see this in play as the futile resistance flails against the inexorable tide of perfection.   
6) Freedom is the ability to sleep at night without worrying if you will wake up the next day.   
7) Freedom is the ability is the ability to sleep at night without worrying if tomorrow you will have food or employment.   
8) Freedom is the ability to wake up do as you please without having being told what to do.   
9) Freedom is the ability to be exactly who you want to be without restrictions from without.  
10) All of these are things that the Mirrian resistance must fight. Meanwhile, those of us that have been blessed with the Glistening Oil sleep with no such worries. Phyrexia provides safety. Comfort. Employment. Nourishment. A place in the Great Work where all are pleased to be and work willingly without oppression.  
11) You might assume that these conditions are easy to meet. You are wrong.  
12) Suppose an injury prevents you from fulfilling employment. Suppose you anger someone without knowing. Suppose your time is not yours to spend on being yourself and must be spent slaving away beneath an employer to produce a product that is not yours to claim.   
13) Phyrexia does not have employers. It has niches. A place where we all belong where are all pleased to serve. It is not employment. It is a home.   
14) If your definition of freedom involves you worrying about any of these things then you have been fooled and led astray by those who have the freedom to tell you what freedom looks like.   
15) On Phyrexia, there is only truth. Lies only lead to inefficiency. Honesty. Truth. Those are the reality of Phyrexia.  
16) So long as you must spend your every day ensuring you will survive another day, so long as you must spend your every day working for another who will take the fruits of your labors for themselves, then you are not and cannot be free.   
17) You can be certain that those who truly have freedom will argue endlessly with you, to convince you that you do have freedom. Great stories of struggle and strife and competition against ever oppressive foes they will tell. Then, using these anecdotal instances, they will claim that anyone can achieve freedom.  
18) Even a fool who spends a moment thinking about that will realize how incredulous that claim is. If but only one member of the bottom of the sociological mountain is able to climb to the top, then the top will shout from the mountain top how wonderful it is that the bottom can rise.  
19) But think for a moment how many stone rest at the top of the mountain. If even one stone is added, the mountain top will know it immediately.   
20) Now think of the mountain bottom and the number of stones there. If a single stone leaves, the mountain bottom will take no notice.   
21) All the while, the mountain top will exclaim that beauty of the mountain and point at the newest stone as proof of how freedom is for everyone.  
22) But the bottom of the mountain doesn’t see it. It cannot. The difference of the loss of a single stone is no indicator that it a future of the rest of the stones.  
23) Those at the top of the sociological mountain will argue that if every stone at the bottom were able to rise to the top the mountain would collapse.  
24) This is true. It would. But the stones at the bottom of the mountain could care less, as they weren’t at the top anyways.  
25) At first glance this may seem to indicate chaos or needless destruction. But take a moment and consider what it would mean if the mountain top crumbled on top of the mountain bottom. What would be left after the dust settles?  
26) The stones at the top of the mountain would claim that nothing but rubble would be left.  
27) Despite all their time at the heights of the mountain, the stones at the top never could see the bigger picture.   
28) If the mountain crumbled, yes there would be rubble. But what would be left would be a plateau. A high place where the every stone is equally free.  
29) Freedom is not a gift that can be given. But it is he greatest gift that can be received. And what is not given can be taken.  
30) Freedom is a gift. A glorious gift that should never be withheld, for doing so is a crime unlike any other.  
31) There is a false belief that by granting freedom, on has less of it for themselves.  
32) Phyrexia grants freedom to all at no price to Phyrexia itself.  
33) As I said earlier, those who have freedom are the least equipped to define it. As such. Those with freedom lose sight of what freedom is.   
34) On Phyrexia, all have access to freedom. As such, all have access enough to freedom to be able to define it as there are none without it.   
35) What once stood for the ability to be yourself has become the desire to have what others do not.  
36) Such is the natural law of those who must compete for resources. On Phyrexia all have the exact amount of resources they need. Phyrexia knows no such selfishness. We share what we have freely with all. To no one is the Glistening Oil denied.


	3. Chapter 3

The Phyrexian Orthodoxy  
   
The Book of Vorinclex  
Chapter 1

1) Only the strong survive. That is why Phyrexia will dominate the multiverse.  
2) Are you surprised to hear that I know of the multiverse? Do not be.   
3) Just as the hunter knows that there is yet prey to hunt, I know that Phyrexia’s great work has not yet completed its task.  
4) Jin-Gitaxias has his instruments and his research to tell him that other worlds exist.   
5) Sheoldred’s spies have gleaned from Jin-Gitaxias’ underlings that they exist and she is more than happy enough to accept they exist so that she may yet have more power to gain and more life to extinguish.   
6) Urabrask is far too busy working in New Phyrexia’s core and its furnaces to ensure the survival of the world, maximize our production, and harness energy to power the gates to these new worlds when the time comes.  
7) Elesh Norn is too busy uniting us all from our infighting and bickering. She has heard of other worlds from Sheoldred but she is too busy uniting this one to care at the moment.  
8) I am no fool. I am not ignorant of my fellow praetors. I am more than just ferocity and power. I am a praetor and that territory comes with its own ecosystem I must be a part of if I am to survive and thrive.   
9) A predator must know their prey if they are to hunt it. They must know its feeding grounds, where it sleeps, what friends it has that might assist it if threatened, what corners it will not be able to back out of if pressed against them.  
10) Already I can see the ecosystem of my fellow praetors. Urabrask does not make alliances with us. He is solitary and does not appreciate our bickering. If he had his way, he would have us all be friends and allies. He is sentimental, but well meaning. His work ethic is comparable to even Jin-Gitaxias. Urabrask loves his work passionately. But he is too devoted, too sentimental. His lack of alliances will be his downfall.  
11) Sheoldred spends her time fighting with the Steel Thanes to maintain her power. All the resources she spends fighting with them are resources she is not spending on furthering the Great Work. So focused is she on information gathering and disinformation dissemination, she will not be able to handle a frontal attack. Her tactics are fall too subtle and sneaky. She expects everyone to fight in the same way. When one of us sends our armies at her, she will not be prepared to fight back.  
12) Jin-Gitaxias will soon fall behind. His research and studies are becoming obsessive. Very soon his materials will run thin as the Mirrians are exterminated and as this planet’s low amount of organic resources of this world becomes his limiting factor. When that happens he will kneel before Elesh Norn in hopes of her assistance in acquiring more resources. Jin-Gitaxias has poor social skills. Making enemies is the limits of that realm of his abilities. For more resources he will need to find a new world. To do that, he will need to build and power the planar gates. For that… he will need Urabrask. And only Elesh Norn is on speaking terms with Urabrask as only she is patient enough to maintain any kind of communication with him. Jin-Gitaxias will never reach power. Influence, perhaps. But he will never have true power.  
13) I know how the natural order works. No one understands evolution and survival of the fittest more than I do. This wisdom has allowed me to see the cause of the fall of my fellow praetors. It has also allowed me to see which of them will dominate. Elesh Norn.   
14) She unites us all. Already she has become the Grand Cenobite. It will not be long now before she begins to unite the rest of us. Independently, her forces are not uniquely strong. But her power comes from the alliances she makes and the devotion she forges in her followers.  
15) Sheoldred will be the first to fall beneath Elesh Norn’s clutches. Sheoldred and the Steel Thanes are caught up fighting one another. When she takes over their realm, their infighting will come to an end.   
16) When that happens, she will solidify her position as the grand uniter of Phyrexia. If even the Steel Thanes are brought to unity before her, then all can be brought to unity before her.  
17) Urabrask will be next for he intentionally has isolated himself from his fellow praetors. Bringing his realm into the fold will prove that Elesh Norn can unite those who do not wish to unite.  
18) As I said earlier Jin-Gitaxias will be next. He will feverishly research until he is out of resources and will bow before Elesh Norn in exchange for more.  
19) Only I will remain. And even so I cannot see where that standstill will end.  
20) Independently, Elesh Norn and her vanguard are not too powerful for me to defeat on my own. I could crush them by myself. All of them.  
21) But Elesh Norn’s power is not tied to her units. It is tied to all of Phyrexia as a whole…  
22) I am the apex predator of Phyrexia. But even I know that there are certain fights I should not pick. If I can at all avoid a confrontation with her, I will. Even if I never overcome her to rule Phyrexia, I must ensure I do not become her servant. I would settle for coworker.  
23) There is harmony in natural order. There is harmony in evolution. I have the wisdom of both. Enough to ensure that, even if I am not the apex predator, that I will never be prey.


	4. The Book of Sheoldred Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 from the Book of Sheoldred. Here, we learn the root of power.

The Book of Sheoldred   
Chapter 1

1) Truth and Trust and Lies are all part of the same web. Together they form the grandest weapon of all. Reality.  
2) Mastery over reality makes you a god.  
3) Immune to deception. Unquestioned in authority.  
4) Truth is that which binds reality to perception. It is the outside of the web that holds the web to the environment.  
5) Truth allows you to see past Lies, making you immune to deception.  
6) Truth allows you to see who is worthy of Trust and who is not.  
7) Knowing the truth is the anchor to reality. Imagine reality without truth.  
8) You cannot. Without knowing Truth, Reality cannot be.   
9) Lies cannot exist without Truth. And without Lies, there cannot be Trust.  
10) Reality without Truth is no reality at all.  
11) Lies are what connect Truth to Trust. There cannot be Trust if there is no reason to the Truth to be contested.   
12) If all in reality is true, there is no need for Trust. When that happens, what will become of Reality?   
13) Reality becomes transparent. No interaction is meaningful. No friendship is genuine.  
14) Lies are what give value to Truth and purpose to Trust.  
15) Trust is the application of Lies and Truth, the natural consequence of their pairing.   
16) Without Trust, Lies have no power. You cannot use the Truth to gain power or Lies to deceive if no Trust if had.  
17) While Truth and Lies both have great potential for use, without Trust who will believe your Truth or act upon your Lies?  
18) Truth and Trust and Lies. Each must exist with one another. At the center is Trust that give meaning and application to Truth and Lies. Binding the web to the perception is Truth. Lies are what surround and connect Truth to Trust and surrounds Trust completely.   
19) Truth. Lies. Trust. The three corners of Reality, the grandest weapon of all.  
20) Master over reality is the definition of a god.   
21) But Mastery is a skill that must be obtained. Merely having Truth, Trust, and Lies is not enough.  
22) The secret to mastery over Reality is to use the three points of Reality effectively.  
23) Too many Lies and Trust is destroyed and Truth is obscured.   
24) Too much Trust is a liability. The consequences of breaking Trust when it has been too firmly, it will never be built again. Truth will never again exist when too much Trust is broken.  
25) Too much Truth will weaken you mastery over Reality. It grants others a foothold on which to begin their own mastery over Reality.  
26) Truth must be fed in small but reasonable pieces. Doled out enough at once to be useful to the recipient, but not enough to grant them power or put Trust at a risk.  
27) Lies must be fed close enough to the Truth that they are indistinguishable, but not often enough to endanger Trust.   
28) This is how Reality is mastered and dominated.


End file.
